


At Fitting Ends

by Squidink



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers Generation One
Genre: Decepticons being Decepticons, Gen, Megatron: Origins, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-30
Updated: 2008-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-11 12:30:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squidink/pseuds/Squidink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere along the long way down, Ratbat had learned to serve.  He had been a senator, an esteemed descendant of the progenitors!  His lineage was prestigious, his reach had been vast, his influence stretching from city to city, and still, he found himself here, of all places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Fitting Ends

**Author's Note:**

> Criticism welcomed.

Ratbat, nestled snugly between Laserbeak and the darkness of partial subspace, seethed.  His… _colleagues_ … ignored his bursts of muted emotion, the internal screech of his offended pride.  They had grown used to its monotonous presence, as he had grown used to their indifference.  It made no matter what they thought of Ratbat.  Or of anything, really.  They were at best ends only thralls, after all, extensions of _him._  Servants and spies and thieves, all warmly embraced into some perverse little, heh, ‘family’.

As, Ratbat supposed, he must now come to regard himself as part and parcel of, distasteful as it was.  He had been a senator, an esteemed descendant of the progenitors!  His lineage was prestigious, his reach had been vast, his influence stretching from city to city, and still, he found himself here, of all places.   Somewhere along the long way down, he had learned to serve.   And it grated, to know what he had become, and what he had been, and to _feel_ the traitor's satisfaction in that knowledge.

Ratbat’s memory could have been erased.  It was a relatively simple procedure, as far as data transfers went.   He could have begun anew, a creature without a past, no longer steeped in his old pride.  But instead he suffered in silence and solitude, shunned by those who, by twisted rights, should have been his newfound kin.  As a _fuel scout_ , of all things!   Oh, and over it all, _he_ loomed.  They – all of them! – were thugs, beings bound from their very sparking or creatures like himself, coerced to join with Soundwave.  And even among these pitiful wretches, he was not one, he was not welcomed. 

A prickle of awareness pushed against his thoughts, slick as mercury.  Once, his firewalls would have been enough to keep out such an intrusion.   Now, however….

"Ratbat, eject."

He was buffeted forward, unwillingly hurled back into the stark Cybertronian night.  Ratbat unfolded from the cramped, flimsy form he wore in subspace, spreading the disgraceful protrusions that passed for wings to slow his momentum.  He flapped them with mad desperation, ungainly and inelegant with the awkward flight array.  Straining, he at last managed to stabilize himself, by virtue of primitive wing beats and purposefully weakened anti-gravitational technology.  So unnecessary, this indignity!  So cruel!  So _petty_!  It was practically empurata!  What right had this— this— this up-jumped data miner to use him as such?  Sullen but steady, he looked back to Soundwave, fuming at the sheer presumption.

Once it had been he who had issued the commands.  Once it was he who had manipulated the fate of Cybertron itself.

"Operation: surveillance."

No more.

The data package transmitted over their insidious link, filling his retrograded mind almost to capacity.   Such a simple task, if only he had his old body.   He had been able to cogitate on multiple processors, extrapolating data like this as easily as transforming.  Now, this pitiful transfer of a few coordinates and a simple assignment nearly overwhelmed him.

For perhaps a moment too long, Ratbat lingered, wishing for a vocalizer with which to vent his hate, for one moment to be endowed again with the capacity for speech.   He had taken it for granted, in his other life, those little satisfactions.   How different things would have been, had he but known of Soundwave’s treacherous streak, or even of that upstart Megatron’s brutish charisma.   The miner was only supposed to be a blunt instrument.  He was only ever a small step on the ladder to power.  There had been no way of anticipating how far Megatron would go.  And Soundwave was supposed to be Ratbat’s creature, through and through.  _Just_ _once_ , Ratbat thought. _Give me the words but once and it will be enough for a lifetime of servitude._

Another push of awareness flashed across Ratbat’s own.   He was certain Soundwave was drinking in every hateful thought like it was fine high-grade.  So smug, so self-satisfied, so _small minded_.   How had he ever relied upon such an inferior specimen was beyond Ratbat.   It was so patently obvious, now. 

"That is an order," Soundwave said, in the same impassive, deferential tone he had once employed so effortlessly.  If he had lips with which to smile, Ratbat had very little doubt that a smirk would have appeared across that otherwise dispassionate visage. "… _Senator_."

Vile, treasonous wretch!  Despite himself, Ratbat's jaw worked, producing a sad little buzz in the bottom of his chest that should have spat forth bitterness and loathing.  He was painfully aware of the empty space inside of him that should have held a vocalizer.  It wasn't right, it wasn't _right_!  How could he be subjugated so?   He was Ratbat!  He was one of the most prominent mechanisms on the whole of Cybertron!

Soundwave, ostensibly patient, tilted his head inquiringly.  His mind prodded at Ratbat, urging him to depart to his little task, like a good drone.

Beyond furious, Ratbat hung in place, defiance radiating from every particle of his being.  He would not.  He _would not._

Push came to shove came to lash, and Ratbat could not resist that fathomless, dark mind for long.  Unable to scream his fury, Ratbat flashed his optics and turned away, laboring his way through the dead skies.   He would endure this ignominy, for now, and function as he was compelled to.  But there would be a time, in a hundred thousand vorns or in a day, where Soundwave would slip.  And Ratbat would be there, waiting, ready to take back what was his by rights.

He could bide his time.  He could be patient.  What else did he have, save the waiting?


End file.
